1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing and, in particular, to update of information displayed in Web documents. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and program for timely update of information displayed within a portal.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of Web related applications has become more and more prevalent in society, both in business and in everyday personal tasks. For example, many personal Web users begin a Web session with a “portal” page. A portal is a Web “supersite” that provides a variety of services including, for example, Web searching, news, white and yellow pages directories, electronic mail, discussion groups, online shopping, and links to other sites. Although the term was initially used to refer to general purpose sites, the term “portal” may also be used to refer to other sites that offer a plurality of services, particularly those providing dynamic content.
A portal server is a network server that deploys portal services to a public Web site or internal intranet. A portal server may also refer to an application that is used to develop, deliver, and maintain portal services through a Web page. A portal server typically includes a variety of tools and functions, including user authentication, identity management, a search facility, and content aggregation capabilities.
User personalization may also be a feature, which lets people customize their own Web pages. User personalization may be effectuated using “portlets.” A portlet is a small window or function that may be used by a portal server to build a portal page. Portlet technology allows a portal page to be customized more quickly either internally by the development team or by the end user. Portlet technology may come as an adjunct to a portal server or as optional interfaces to enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. The degree of customization also varies. As a typical example, a user may customize a portal page to include a search engine portlet, a stock price portlet, a weather portlet, and a sports scores portlet. However, more application specific examples may also exist. For example, a portal page may provide monitoring services for network resources, where each portlet presents a particular monitor.
When a user requests a portal page through a browser, the portal server dynamically generates the portal page using the various portlets that make up the page. The portal page may include time dependent content, such as stock quote information, weather information, or resource monitoring information. Therefore, a portal page typically includes a function, such as a JavaScript function, for example, that periodically sends a refresh request for the page. However, this function sends refresh requests whether update information is available for the page or not. This results in many unwarranted refresh operations, which creates additional network traffic and causes the portal server to repeatedly recreate the same portal page unnecessarily.